


Step One

by thepsychicclam



Category: Lucille - Kenny Rogers (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepsychicclam/pseuds/thepsychicclam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucille leaves her husband for a better life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zarabithia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/gifts).



She stood in the doorway, duffle bag by her feet. The house was quiet; the kids were down the road at a friend’s house, her husband still out in the field. The house looked dark in the dying daylight, speckles of dust floating in the rays of orange sunshine slanting through the windows. She felt split as she realized she was looking at the house for the last time. There was a part of her that screamed to stay, the part that anchored her there every other time; there was another part that was yanking her away, out the door behind her, into the open air. Her feet were rooted to the floor, but after ten minutes of debating, she wiped her eyes and picked up her duffle bag.

The bar was by the train depot, and her ticket was for a few hours later. She was afraid if she sat in the station alone she’d change her mind, so she turned to whiskey courage. The man beside her wasn’t handsome – plain and rough around the edges – but after a few shots, she decided it would be nice to talk to a man who saw her as a woman, not as a live-in maid and baby factory.

Then he showed up. She steeled herself against his face, his smell, his words; she knew how weak she could be at times. But as he talked, his hands shaking, she realized she didn’t give a damn anymore. It was a relief, that is until he mentioned the children. She thought of them, all four faces wondering where she was, and she almost went back. But there had to be a first step, and she was taking it.

After he left, she stared at the whiskey in her shot glass, ignoring the man still sitting beside her. She couldn’t help but feel like a monster – what kind of woman leaves her children? She had tried leaving with them before, had them all packed up in the station wagon before he came running out of the house, screaming and cussing, his face a bright purple and nearly foaming at the mouth. The youngest was crying, the oldest holding the middle two behind him. She saw the terror etched in each dirty line of their faces and knew this wasn’t the way it was going to happen. It had to be one step at a time.

She had plans, you see. She was going to get away from her husband first, set up a little house that she could live in with her children with yellow curtains in the kitchen that overlooked a flower bed. Taylor was just a little under an hour from Toledo, just across the state border. A new state for a new beginning. She was going to get a job waitressing or in a factory, and as soon as she could she’d go get the kids. She was doing this for herself, but most of all, she was doing it for them.

When the man whispered that there was a hotel next door, she jumped off the barstool and headed for the door, not even looking back to see if he was following. Inside the hotel room, she let her hair down, thick dark curls cascading down her back. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and for a moment saw a stranger, a beautiful stranger with a bright future and hopes of happiness. When she turned to face the mirror, the vision was replaced by a shadow of that woman, with dark circles, worry lines etched around her eyes, calloused hands with broken nails.

She wanted to be a woman tonight. She wanted to be touched by a man, lose herself in sex and kisses and caresses. She slinked over to the man perched on the edge of the bed, pulled her blouse over her head and didn’t feel ashamed to be seen in her old, tattered white bra. When she leaned down to kiss him, he held up his hand, shook his head.

She squared her shoulders and picked her blouse off the floor, all while he sat that looking at her with a pained expression on his face. She turned her back to him and walked out of the hotel room, realizing that fucking a stranger didn’t make her a woman.

She had become a woman again the moment she walked out on her husband.

There were only two hours before the train left. She went to the station, bought an RC Cola, and sat on the bench in the terminal. The terminal was empty. She unzipped her duffle bag, the one she took on vacation with her husband to Cleveland, and rummaged through her things looking for a small pouch. When she found it, she pulled it out and opened it. Inside were only three things: her grandmother’s pearl earrings, her father’s purple heart, and a picture of the kids. She took the picture in her hand, gently stroking their smiling faces with the tips of her fingers. She smiled, missing them already.

“Momma’s gonna make it better,” she whispered, a tear splashing against the baby’s face. She wiped it off and carefully tucked the picture back inside the pouch.

When the train rolled into the station, her heart started beating a million miles an hour. She knew this was it, the crucial moment. She thought of her husband, his weather-beaten face, eyes that had lost their warmth years ago. For a moment, she mourned for the man she married, the smiling young man with a used pick up and five acres of land. He had wanted to be a farmer like his dad, like her dad – like everyone they knew – but life hadn’t had the same goal for him. His soul had hardened with the weathering of the crops and the callousing of his hands.

The man back at the house wasn’t the man she married, and the life they had built wasn’t what she had said “I do” to. Her kids went hungry half the time, and they wore worn out shoes and pants from yard sales. They deserved better. They were smart, could maybe go to college and get good jobs and have the life she never did. She had stopped living on dreams that would never come true; now she could live out her dreams through them.

The final call sounded through the station, and she grabbed her duffle bag and walked to the train. Before she entered, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she placed the first step onto the train.

When she was seated by the window, the dark streets of Toledo rushing away from her, she realized that step one was complete. She knew that the first step was always the hardest; the rest would follow from there.

She smiled, and the woman looking back at her in the window, the one with the dark curls and bright eyes, was a familiar stranger she hadn’t seen in years.

-fin


End file.
